Play that thing

I think it’s interesting the way the guitar became the musical instrument of my generation. For previous generations, if there was an instrument it was the piano, but for the most part singers just sang. Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Eddie Fisher, et al. – they had orchestras or large bands backing them up, but they themselves just sang.

And indeed, many early rock and rollers “just sang.” Paul Anka, Frankie Avalon, Bobby Darin (and all the other Bobbys – Vee, Vinton, Rydell, Sherman), Barry Manilow (who actually played the piano), the various singing groups – the Drifters, the Temptations, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, the Four Seasons – all of these people were more or less carrying on the tradition of the singers from the 30s, 40s and early 50s. They were just singing a different kind of song.

But beginning with Bill Haley and the Comets, and continuing through people like Elvis, Buddy Holly, Ricky Nelson, the folk singers of the 60s, British Invasion groups of the mid-60s, the psychedelic groups of the late 60s and early 70s, holding a guitar while you sang was de rigueur, and I’m wondering why. Perhaps, in the case of early rockers, because so many of them were influenced by black blues singers, who generally played a guitar while they sang. So did country and western singers, who were also, no doubt, an influence.

Whatever the reason, the music of my generation became defined by the guitar. Females could swoon over Eric Clapton as he sang; males could admire the way he played the guitar. Indeed, in some way I think playing the guitar made being a singer more manly! I suppose we could get all Freudian and point out how much like an extension of the infamous male “member,” as they say in discreet novels, a guitar can seem. Especially the way some men hold it, wrestle with it, lead with it. In her rather tepid autobiography, Wonderful Tonight, Patty Boyd mentions the time that her then-husband George Harrison in effect challenged her soon-to-be husband Eric Clapton to a guitar duel. The two men tried to play one another into the ground – “I’m better at this than you!” That, of course, is the age-old competitiveness that comes out in men no matter what they do...like skate boarding! Can you remember when skate boarding was just a silly thing young boys did for fun? Now there are extreme skate board competitions. And dueling guitars.

The other night I watched the 30th anniversary concert of Tom Petty on the late night program Sound Stage. Petty has a sort of whiny, nasally voice and perpetually stoned manner that do not particularly appeal to me, but he’s a pretty good guitarist, when he’s not strutting around, and he had a really great lead guitarist playing with him, whom he introduced as Mike Campbell. Often these “other guys in the band” are fantastic musicians, who are a real pleasure to listen to when they get their minute and a half of solo time. Both when both men were playing solos, and when they were engaged in intense “duets”, I got the sense that this was when they felt most successful, most like Big Men.

To my mind, a better arena for proving oneself than the football field. And the music they produced really rocked.

Not long ago I caught a rerun of the Eric Clapton Crossroads concert that was held in Chicago in July, 2007. While the big emphasis was on blues, of which I am not a huge fan (another thing I’ve occasionally wondered is why both blues and jazz are so much more popular with men than with women), there were all these guitars, and terrific guitarists, and the audience was absolutely loving it. As the concert went on, it became more rock oriented. Wimpy rocker John Mayer, whose singing has never done anything for me, proved himself a really excellent guitarist. I was also really impressed by the playing of Derek Trucks (and how’s that for an unlikely name). This guy looks and acts like one of the “other guys in the band,” even though he has his own group. But I was just knocked out by his playing, as was the audience.

That’s what it all comes down to in the end, the music, the rhythmic, wailing sounds that lots of love and lots of practice produce. No different from a great violinist or classical pianist, but this was “our music.” Our instrument.